Love's Stinger
by knives4cash
Summary: Blake demands change from Yang.


Part fifty-six of my RWBY series, "Pollination: The Bumblebee and White Rose"

* * *

In my defence, the only way I would ever have learned to appreciate the academic side of education was by living my whole life without it. If I had been born into a decent family and raised with education always at my side, I'd probably be ungrateful or unprepared to tackle the expectations and demands that it brings down on all of us.

All of these students, walking between classes, groaning and griping, all are releasing aura and hormones that tell me one thing: pressure. They feel this pressure all the time. And one would think that tackling deadly animals would be the main source of pressure, but no. It's the academic side to Beacon. Of all things.

A nice stroll through the gardens always relieves stress for me. Exotic and colorful plants, menacing insects, and those creatures of the avian variety that must be destroyed always bring about a sense of wonder and realization that I'm just a single pawn in a much larger game for life.

I still hate birds, though.

Advancing the plot, dorm life is nice as well. Narrow halls force traffic to condense making it ideal for school shootings but hey, no one has figured that out yet! One swipe of a keycard and I'm gracefully given access to my humble abode.

And the first thing I'm greeted with is the furious bleep-blooping of Yang and her scroll. Hunched over in her bunk bed, she doesn't notice my arrival.

"Yes!" she whisper shrieks with a few more rapid taps of her device. "Faunus lover sixty-nine scores another victory! That's what you get when you betray the might Bumblebee Empire!"

"Bumblebee?" I wonder aloud as I shut the door. "I don't recall forging another alliance with you."

She looks up with a gleam. "Kitty cat!" Tossing her scroll to the end of the bed, she motions for me to join her. "Let's cuddle!"

In hindsight, we probably should not have used books to serve as a buffer between our bunks.

"As much as I'd love to, I'm afraid I'll have to decline your offer," I sadly inform her as I put my pack down on my bunk and move to the closet. "I have calculus to do."

"Aaaw, you can do that later, can't you?" Yang whines as I get out the foldout table and a chair for myself. How odd, her own backpack is at the foot of her bunk and seems to be untouched. "Your girlfriend of three months needs attention!"

"So do my grades," I firmly assure her as I set up the table and move to take my bag.

But hold on now. Yang has been like this for a while now. I didn't think much of it at first, but I rarely see her doing her work. And whenever we discuss assignments as a team, she tends to refrain from speaking her mind.

"Yang?" I cautiously begin as I move to her bunk and retrieve her pack. "How well are you doing on your classes?"

Unzipping its contents, I find papers with a lot of red, numbers averaging sixty, and many letters marked with notices and attentions.

"Ooooh, well enough!" she nervously chuckles as she hops down. "You don't have to worry about good, old Yang!" she lies as she tries to swipe her bag from me.

"Unbelievable," I groan as I evade her moves, thanks to my semblance. "You're barely passing Grimm bio and Human history. Calculus, you're failing. Physics, you're failing. Weapon engineering, you're-"

Huh, eight-nine. Not bad, actually.

"Okay, look," she huffs as she finally grabs her incriminating evidence and steps back. "I don't need you worrying about me too, alright?" she pleads as she throws the pack onto her bed again.

Arms crossed, I'm not interested in concealing my disapproval. "How long has this been going on?"

Refusing to meet my gaze, she attempts, "It's not a big-"

"How. Long?" She's not worming her way out of this.

She groans. "Four months."

"FOUR months?!" She's so calm for someone doing so poorly!

"Just chill, okay?" she begs. "It's not that bad! I'll get it together, I just need time to consolidate and, um-"

"Why?" I wonder. "Why do you not care about your best chance at a great future?"

"It's not that I don't!" she shoots. "It's just that I don't really need it, Blake. I want to be a huntress, and I can already do that with my physical prowess. I don't need to know the math and junk for teaching and stuff."

Unbelievable and naive. "You need that math 'and junk' for calculating your odds of survival, success in combat. You need physics to figure out what weapons you need for whatever combat scenario you'll encounter. What type of dust do you need to penetrate Nevermore wings? What if you're combating aquatic Grimm? Can you afford to contaminate the water?"

She's quickly grown annoyed. "You sound like a textbook."

I'm trying to help this supposed woman! "This knowledge is going to save your life, Yang."

Raising her voice, she continues to lie to herself. "But I don't need it! I can do just fine without it!"

"You will DIE without it!" Grabbing her by the collar, I deadpan, "I don't want you to die!"

"Well I won't!" she spits as she wrenches her way out of my grasp. "So you can sod off, because I've been fine my whole life WITHOUT your nagging!"

I think I see how it is. "Fine."

"Fine!" she decides with me.

"You go get yourself killed in the forests! I won't be there to cry over your shredded corpse! Neither will Weiss, and certainly not Ruby!"

Her aura skyrockets at my insinuation. "WHAT do you mean by that?!"

"You want to be a huntress but don't want to do the work?" Throwing my arms into the air, I emphasize, "Fine! But I can assure you, Yang Xiao Long, you won't make it. You'll get kicked out, and Team RWBY will go on without you!"

I usually don't grow this sweaty in a fight, so I'm sure it's from Yang's semblance. "We'll learn to fight without you! Ruby won't drop out just to be with you, because she, Weiss, and I want to take as much of this knowledge as we can!"

"OOOOH, because you know MY sister SOOO well!" Chest heaving, she screams, "MY sister will NOT abandon me! We've NEVER left each other behind, and we're not going to start now!"

"Well I know Weiss!" I shout back. "She won't let YOU drag HER girlfriend down into failure! She'll put your sister on a forced march over the bridge of success even if it KILLS her!"

"No! That! You!" Growing more and more flustered, she begins to synge. "AAAARGH!"

"I care about you, Yang!" I confess. "I don't want you to fail."

"Then let me handle my own affairs!" she demands as she slouches down on my bunk.

"Then I'll let you fail! It's quite clear that you can't save yourself!" I decide as I drop to my knees and take her hands in my own.

"Stop treating me like I'm a criminal or a madman!" she demands as she grabs me by my own collar and hoists us both up to our feet. "I am your teammate! Your girlfriend! Your EQUAL!"

"THEN ACT LIKE IT!" I ultimate, taking her by the arms and unhanding her from me. "You want to be MY girlfriend?! MY teammate?! My EQUAL?! You can't be a dropout, and you certainly can't be DEAD!"

As our breaths come down in volume, I wipe the sweat from my brow. "You can't let yourself fall like this, Yang."

She claws at her hair, pulling out strands of golden sunlight. "Okay," she gasps. "Okay, Blake. I can't do it by myself. I can't. So what do I do?"

"You let us help you." Extending my arms, I ask, "Will you let us help you, Yang?"

Nodding, she embraces me with her iron strength. "I will, I'll rise with you, and I'll rise with my team. Ruby won't know any heartbreak from me."

"I don't want that from you either," I confess as I breath in her glorious scent and absorb the heat radiating from her body. "I don't want to break up with you, I don't want to go on without you, and I don't want you to die."

"I don't want to leave you, Blake." Sighing, Yang slackens. "But I was able to blow through grade school and Signal Academy. This stuff's hitting me like a red dust, twelve gauge slug."

"Not anymore," I reassure as I continue to hold her. "You know how to do the work, you just have to push harder."

"Okay," she agrees, finally accepting the reality of her previous flaws. "I'll do whatever you need of me, I just want to stay with all of you."

A gentle kiss on the cheek seems fit for the poor woman. "Then let's get you a chair," I begin, motioning towards the foldout table. "We have work to complete."

This is good. We're going to make as many sacrifices and take as long as we need to get this intelligent and beautiful woman back in line. And I'll be there for her, now at the study table; and I'll be there on the stage, at her side, when we graduate. It's going to take a lot of sweat, cramps, and maybe even tears to get there; but it's our best shot at the brightest future.

"I'm so sorry, Blake."

Looking to the blonde as I prepare our books and scratch paper, I declare, "Your behavior was the result of lost ways. I know all too well about those."

"Then it's about to change, I promise you that, Blake," Yang declares with absolute resolution.

And right now, I couldn't be happier. "Then I'll stand by your side, I promise YOU that, Yang."

Her smile is absolutely astounding.

She's so gorgeous.


End file.
